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The Chicago Transit Authority is in the process of renovating many of its subway and elevated train stations. In some cases, the improvements are long overdue and those of us locals who have to adjust our travel plans accordingly are only too happy to do so.

This week, the CTA announced plans to renovate the 70-year-old Clark/Division stop on the city’s north side. The Chicago Tribune reported that subway station hasn’t undergone a major renovation since it opened. Perhaps it suffices to say the $50.6 million estimate sounds about right.

Among the many updates the CTA plans for its sixteenth-busiest rail stop are cast iron street-level entrances, which will be a significant improvement in terms of both practicality and aesthetics. The present entrances are (is it just me?) perpetually slippery clay-tile stairways lined with tubular railings coated in thick, flaking red paint.

The entire renovation will take until mid-2015, and it promises to be well worth the wait.

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The “Viseum” in Wetzlar, Germany, is featuring a 7.5-ft. cast bronze, nickel-plated spoon—the largest utensil manufacturer WMF has ever produced. The sculpture is designed to highlight the reflections and optical distortions of looking into a polished bowl of a spoon.

The CAD data of the original spoon was adjusted to the required size on the computer. This data was then transferred to a voxeljet VX1000 printer, which produced a plastic model of the bowl of the spoon using a layer building method. The printer produced the entire model in approximately 10 hours, from thousands of 0.00591-inch (0.15 mm) layers that were selectively glued together with a binder. The large build space of the machine made it possible to print the bowl in one piece at 33.5 x 16.4 x 7.5 inches (850 x 416 x 192 millimeters).

The unpacking process, during which excess material is removed from the model, was followed by a stiffening process using artificial resin and subsequent finishing. This method did away with the construction of a negative mold, resulting in significant cost and time savings. The printed PMMA model was used to quickly generate a sand mold that was cast in bronze.

“Not least due to 3D print technology, this project was completed quickly and without any problems,” said Gerd Greiner, manager of the WMF model building studio in Geislingen, Germany.